Day 6 – Florida Roadtrip – Highlands Hammock State Park, FL

We felt warm in our tent all night. Yelisei had some sniffles the day before and I was starting to be worried that he was getting sick from all this cold. I got the kids some vitamins and I guess that helped. Yelisei was waking up much less at night. So when I was unzipping our tent I realized that the inside of our rain fly was covered with a sheet of ice!! We are in Florida and it is the end of March! Our car and picnic table and our chairs were all in ice. The sun was out though and soon it melted. I started cooking breakfast in two sweaters and a down jacket and by the end I was wearing just a t-shirt.

This morning breakfast was a long forgotten Russian staple: last night’s dinner leftovers fried with eggs. It was a first time my kids seen anything like this for breakfast and it took some convincing to make them eat it. They could not believe that it was legitimate food to eat in the morning.

We picked this park because on the pictures it had lush tropical forests and lots of trails. By 10:30 we were at the head of a 20 minute swamp trail that promised alligator sightings. Just as we got out of our car a school bus full of children pulled in and went down the same trail. I thought we will never see alligators. To my surprise we did see some animals on that trail. They were a flock of beautiful birds that were having lunch in the shallow waters of the swamp. They were duck size birds with long flamingo like legs and a thin long beak that was curved down. I was very impressed. Our children were not impressed. Yelisei wanted to poop. People in front of us and people behind. It reminded me of me wanting to pee when we were hiking in Machupichu on a trail three feet wide with a wall to the left and a cliff to the right with 50 people in front and 50 in the back, all walking as fast as they can.

In any case, if you smell poop when walking down that trail, it was Yelisei.

After having lunch in the park we are on the road again to the Everglades.